Mother and Me (52 page)

“No, I can't,” she said, angrily.

“What if I help pull?”

“No!”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it does. See if you can lift the log.”

“Did you break your bone?”

“I don't know. Try and lift it off my leg.”

I straddled the branch and reached down to lift it. But it would not budge.

“Maybe we can lift it together,” Mother said. But I could see that she couldn't get enough of an angle to be of much help.

“What are we going to do now?” I asked.

Mother kicked at the log with her other foot. “Ow!” she cried. “Find a pole of some sort and pry it off,” she said. “Go find a stick about this big around,” indicating a two-inch diameter with her fingers, “and as tall as you are.”

I immediately tried breaking off another branch of the same tree that she was pinned under, but it wouldn't break. I looked around us, but saw nothing else that would do. “I don't see anything,” I said.

“Walk around and look,” Mother said impatiently. “There's got to be something.”

I could see right from where I was standing that nothing like that showed above the snow, but I began to crawl on all fours to our right.

“Take your knapsack off first,” Mother said. I pulled my arms out of the straps and immediately felt the relief.

Now I could see a large boulder up ahead of me. In shape and size, I realized, it looked a lot like a tank pointed downhill, except without the gun barrel. There was a fairly cylindrical turret and even the top of a man's head sticking out of the hatch. I thought of Fredek and unconsciously raised an imaginary rifle to aim at the protruding head.

“Yulek, are you looking?” I heard behind me.

“Yes, yes!” I yelled back, “but I really don't see anything!”

“Try on the other side, by the stream!”

I turned around and headed back. Suddenly, I was aware of the coincidence of Mother's predicament and my earlier imprisonment on the other slope. I wondered if there was a divine hand involved. What might be God's reason? Was Mother being punished now for her impatience with me?

“Hurry,” Mother said, as I crossed in front of her.

Now I could hear the water splashing and gurgling in front of me, though I couldn't see it. The stream was well below the level of the snow. There were twigs coated with clear ice from, I deduced, water splashing on them. There were sheets of ice, some two feet or more across, that must have been pushed up onto the bank by the current. They stuck up in the air, reminding me of the wafer they stuck into your ice cream in cafes. I wondered why they did that. Kiki had told me that in America somebody had once rolled a wafer into a cone and now everybody there ate their ice cream that way.

One wafer was in the shape of a very big leaf. Another was like a sailboat. A third was like the face of an old woman looking out from behind a rock.

“Do you see anything?!” I heard from Mother, and my thoughts came back to the matter at hand. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes, I'm looking!” I knew I had done wrong letting my mind wander over the ice instead of looking for a stick to get Mother's leg free. I determined to pay attention.

But now, perhaps in reward for my admission, there was something that might do the trick, stuck right in the middle of the water, a few yards downstream. It was planted in the streambed as though it were growing there, except with the thick end up, and vibrating in the air.

I didn't know if I could reach it. Lying flat on my stomach, I stretched my arm out for the branch. The tip of the middle finger of my glove touched it, but I couldn't encircle the stick. I was out over the bank with water running under my face.

I wiggled further out over the water. I heard the crust crack under my weight and experienced an instant of panic as I felt myself go down. But I only dropped a little, and now I had hold of the stick and it helped support me.

“Yulek!” Mother called. “What are you doing!”

“I've found something!” I yelled back.

Suddenly, there was a shadow on the opposite bank. There had been no shadows at all until now, but here was the shadow of a head and shoulders. In an instant I realized that it was my own shadow. But now I was reminded of the witches and horrible hermits that inhabited forests. And that ice wafer that looked like an old woman looking at me from behind a rock, could well have been a witch!

Kiki had assured me that there was no such thing as witches, but she could have been mistaken, since she was brought up in the city. Or she could even have told me that so I wouldn't be afraid to be left in my room alone at night when she went to talk with Marta in the kitchen. Maybe a good fairy or wizard had frozen the witch—or a number of witches—in the ice, and my breaking the ice would release them!

Before I knew it, I was half-crawling, half-running back to Mother. But I had the thick end of the pole in my hand.

“You found one!” Mother said.

Suddenly the sight of my mother sitting there in the snow with her leg trapped under a log was a shock. It was as though
I were seeing her that way for the first time. It was as though I had not really believed her helplessness before.

Filled suddenly with guilt, I jammed the thin end of the pole under the log and pushed. It broke.

“Use the other end,” Mother said. I was already turning the stick around.

“Ow! Ow!” Mother cried when I must have made the log move a little.

“I'm sorry,” I said. I really was sorry—I had caused Mother more pain. I didn't say anything about either the witch or the shadow. Now, back with Mother, I realized that it had been a childish fantasy.

“It's all right,” Mother said very calmly now. “Put the stick in a little further and push straight up. I'll help you.” Mother lay back on the snow so that she could put a hand under the stick. Then she put her free foot against the log. Together we pushed up on the pole and suddenly, with another cry of pain, Mother's leg was free.

I saw the big hole in her black woolen stocking and the clotted blood all over her shin. I felt a shiver go through me, as I usually did at the sight of blood. “Is it… is it broken?” I asked.

“Just a minute,” Mother said. I was sure there was annoyance in her tone. Then she carefully turned her foot left and right. I saw her wince with pain and felt the horrible guilt over playing with the tank and thinking about ice cream wafers while she had sat there hurting.

“Help me stand,” Mother said. I helped her to her feet. “Let me lean on you.” She put her hand on my shoulder. I braced against her weight. Then I felt her weight shift slowly off my shoulder as she tested her hurt leg.

“Is it all right?” I asked anxiously, before I realized I was rushing her again.

“Yes, I think it is. It just hurts. Let me have that stick.”

I wiggled the pole out from under the log and handed it to her. Mother took it, then looked at me very seriously. She looked angry, but she didn't say anything.

There wasn't anything I could think of to say, so I shouldered my backpack again and slid my way down to the next tree and stretched my hand out for her. Mother bit her lip and reached out for my hand. Then, leaning heavily on my hand, she carefully slid down to my tree.

I moved to the next tree and held my hand out again. But I only held it out partway, indicating, I hoped, that I wasn't rushing her, but just there for whenever she was ready.

In a moment, Mother reached out for my hand, and now I stretched it as far as I could toward her. She slid on her good leg and I soon felt her weight against my hand again. Again, I eased her carefully down to my tree and immediately slid down to await her at the next one.

“Just a minute,” Mother said, as I had feared she would. She was feeling rushed again.

I waited at the tree while she took some deep breaths, then, slowly as I could, to show that I wasn't hurrying, I slid down to the next tree. This time, though, instead of holding out my hand, I waited till I saw Mother begin to ease herself away from the tree. Then I reached out my hand and caught hers.

In this manner we worked our way down, edging a little to the right to avoid running into the stream. When we reached the bottom, my arm and shoulder ached from the effort.

I could see that there seemed to be a trail beside the stream. The snow covered any marks on the ground, but it was hard to miss the alley where branches had been broken off by some sort of traffic. This indication of others following this same route was, to me, an encouraging sign.

I waited to see if Mother wanted to rest, but found she didn't, so I set out breaking a trail in the four or five inches of loose snow. Mother shuffled along behind me with the aid of her stick.

I walked at a slow pace, and every few minutes I looked over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't going too fast. I would have welcomed a word or even just a smile of approval, but Mother's face was grim.

We were on a very gentle downhill slope now, making the going pretty easy for me. With relief I realized that as long as we followed the stream, we could at least count on not having any more hills to climb. Occasionally there was a log to step over or a rock to walk around, and each time I waited for Mother to negotiate the obstacle.

The slope on the other side of the stream was flattening out, while the one we had descended, on our right, seemed to be getting steeper. Then the other side of the stream flattened out altogether, and the light got brighter. I saw our stream turning to the left. We followed it around.

“I have to stop for a minute,” Mother said behind me. We were just approaching a fallen tree on which we could sit.

“Let me have your knapsack, and we'll have a sandwich,” Mother said. She spoke through clenched teeth, the way some of the boys in my school in Warsaw spoke when they had something particularly nasty to say to me. I slipped my arms out of the straps and waited.

“Goddamn! Goddamn!” I heard Mother utter behind me.

I turned instinctively. Mother was holding a sandwich that was all covered with frost. “They're hard as rocks,” she said. “It didn't occur to me they would freeze.”

“That's all right—I'm not hungry,” I said quickly. Actually I had been hungry until just that minute.

“How stupid of me!” Mother said furiously.

“It's all right,” I repeated. “I'm not hungry at all.”

“Here, go down to the stream and get some water,” she said, thrusting a tin cup at me.

I walked the few steps to the stream. Then I lay down and reached down to the water. Like earlier, there were wafers of
ice and crusted snow broken into a variety of shapes, but I fixed my eyes on the metal cup and would not let my mind engage in fantasies.

As I brought the water back to Mother, I saw her sitting with her hurt leg straight out in front of her. I realized that I was holding the cup at full arm's length so as not to approach too close. She was barely looking at me. “Did you have some?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Drink some,” she said.

“It's all right—I'll go back for more,” I assured her.

Mother took the cup in both hands and drank, seemingly hunching her shoulders around it. Her eyes were staring at the snow several feet beyond her outstretched leg.

“You're hot, aren't you,” she said. I hadn't been aware that I was, but now I realized that she was right. “Why don't you undo your jacket,” she suggested. I untied the piece of clothesline around my waist. “Let me have it,” she said. “You may need it later.”

When she handed the cup back to me, I asked if she wanted more. “Get some for yourself,” she said. “You have to have water.”

I nodded and returned to the stream. The water tasted very different from the boiled water I had always been given to drink in the past.

Now I was feeling hungry again, but I knew there was nothing to be done about that. I wondered how much further it was to the village.

“Sit down for a minute and rest,” Mother said, when I returned to where she was sitting.

If she was ready to go, I would just as soon have been on our way. “I'm not tired,” I said. I wasn't—our pace was much slower than the one Mademoiselle had set around Lvow.

“You can leave that here now,” Mother said, as I put my arms through the straps of the backpack.

Meesh was in the backpack. But I didn't want to bring up childish fantasies at this time. I grunted and shook my head, hoping Mother wouldn't ask. She didn't.

“All right, we should get going,” Mother said, struggling to her feet. “It's beginning to get dark.”

I hadn't noticed it, but now I saw that she was right.

We were on our way again. But I hadn't counted on its getting dark. At night, there were wolves in the forest—I wasn't sure where they were in the daytime. Their eyes shone like little flashlights, and they chased people in sleighs, eating the ones that fell out.

Then I remembered Mother's telling me that hunters had killed all the wolves except the ones in zoos. Of course, what if a zoo had been bombed, and the wolves had escaped? Wouldn't they come back here to the woods where there were smaller animals to eat?

But I had to be a grownup now, didn't I? Mother wasn't afraid of wolves, so I had to rid myself of my childish fear as well. Besides, if you have faith, Kiki had said, God will protect you. Now I wondered whether that was really true or another of the stories meant for kids.

But if you wondered about it, then it couldn't work, could it? It was true—it was absolutely true. God would protect us because He was all-loving and all-powerful and all-seeing and hearing and knowing, and I believed that down to the very bottom of my heart, yes I did.

The stream, I noticed, was growing bigger. I wondered where the extra water came from, though this was not the time to wonder about things like that. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.